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And, what are we to think of the new forms of being they
introduce- their "Exiles" and "Impressions" and "Repentings"?
If all comes to states of the Soul- "Repentance" when it has
undergone a change of purpose; "Impressions" when it contemplates
not the Authentic Existences but their simulacra- there is
nothing here but a jargon invented to make a case for their
school: all this terminology is piled up only to conceal their
debt to the ancient Greek philosophy which taught, clearly and
without bombast, the ascent from the cave and the gradual advance
of souls to a truer and truer vision.
For, in sum, a part of their doctrine comes from Plato; all the
novelties through which they seek to establish a philosophy of
their own have been picked up outside of the truth.
From Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld
and the changing from body to body; as for the plurality they
assert in the Intellectual Realm- the Authentic Existent, the
Intellectual-Principle, the Second Creator and the Soul- all this
is taken over from the Timaeus, where we read:
"As many Ideal-Forms as the Divine Mind beheld dwelling within
the Veritably Living Being, so many the Maker resolved should be
contained in this All."
Misunderstanding their text, they conceived one Mind passively
including within itself all that has being, another mind, a
distinct existence, having vision, and a third planning the
Universe- though often they substitute Soul for this planning
Mind as the creating Principle- and they think that this third
being is the Creator according to Plato.
They are in fact quite outside of the truth in their
identification of the Creator.
In every way they misrepresent Plato's theory as to the method of
creation as in many other respects they dishonour his teaching:
they, we are to understand, have penetrated the Intellectual
Nature, while Plato and all those other illustrious teachers have
failed.
They hope to get the credit of minute and exact identification by
setting up a plurality of intellectual Essences; but in reality
this multiplication lowers the Intellectual Nature to the level
of the Sense-Kind: their true course is to seek to reduce number
to the least possible in the Supreme, simply referring all things
to the Second Hypostasis- which is all that exists as it is
Primal Intellect and Reality and is the only thing that is good
except only for the first Nature- and to recognize Soul as the
third Principle, accounting for the difference among souls merely
by diversity of experience and character. Instead of insulting
those venerable teachers they should receive their doctrine with
the respect due to the older thought and honour all that noble
system- an immortal soul, an Intellectual and Intelligible Realm,
the Supreme God, the Soul's need of emancipation from all
intercourse with the body, the fact of separation from it, the
escape from the world of process to the world of essential-being.
These doctrines, all emphatically asserted by Plato, they do well
to adopt: where they differ, they are at full liberty to speak
their minds, but not to procure assent for their own theories by
flaying and flouting the Greeks: where they have a divergent
theory to maintain they must establish it by its own merits,
declaring their own opinions with courtesy and with philosophical
method and stating the controverted opinion fairly; they must
point their minds towards the truth and not hunt fame by insult,
reviling and seeking in their own persons to replace men honoured
by the fine intelligences of ages past.
As a matter of fact the ancient doctrine of the Divine Essences
was far the sounder and more instructed, and must be accepted by
all not caught in the delusions that beset humanity: it is easy
also to identify what has been conveyed in these later times from
the ancients with incongruous novelties- how for example, where
they must set up a contradictory doctrine, they introduce a
medley of generation and destruction, how they cavil at the
Universe, how they make the Soul blameable for the association
with body, how they revile the Administrator of this All, how
they ascribe to the Creator, identified with the Soul, the
character and experiences appropriate to partial be beings.
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